tombiro.com

In today’s links, we’ve got food groups, new music, pizza box improvements, new Apple products, and what your email address and credit score together say about you.

• There’s a new Young Jeezy track. Go listen.
• There’s a new Rihanna single out. Buzzworthy compares it to “mid-period Massive Attack.” Go listen.
• Could it be that someone has, in 2009, created the next great pizza box?
• Apple releases new Magic Mouse. Coincidentally, $69 leaves the pockets of thousands and thousands of Americans.
• The Milwaukee Brewers have named Rick Peterson their new pitching coach. In related news, the New York Mets still suck and wonder what happened to their pitching staff. Willie Randolph just laughs.
• Delaware is getting a state park! In other news, it still only takes 15 minutes to drive through the state on I-95 if you have EZPass.
• Your tax dollars at work. Kids need to eat more vegetables and take in less calories. Hey, does this mean that ketchup will finally become a vegetable?
• This comparison of credit scores and their respective owners’ email address domains is more than amusing, and proves that there is indeed a statistic for everything.

Here’s today’s short list of links that are of interest. I’ve got more links, but a lack of time to share. More later this week.

• For the ad lovers out there, check out today’s Q&A w/ Stuart Elliott in the NYT.
• The Yanks are out playing the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, California, USA, North America today, but you can still go to Yankee Stadium, if you were so inclined, to watch the game. I remember doing this during the New York Rangers’ 1994 run to the Stanley Cup, while the team was out in Vancouver. Kind of fun, but it wasn’t like 42 degrees in Madison Square Garden.
• Andy Beal writes about the news that social networking via mobiles has doubled in the last six months. Wow. [via Chris Thilk]
• Dave shared a solid Friday Heh this past week, with the payoff of a Facebook conversation having its way with the “Fresh Prince” theme song and balloon boy.
• Ben Wagner shares some personal perspective and a great way of spelling out what the film adaptation of “Where The Wild Things Are” means to a lot of people.
• This is awesome. That is all.
• Broadband is a privilege, not a right, right? Wrong, if you’re in Finland.

Yep, another edition of links that I’m pretty sure you should click through to.

• Did you hear the one about the Chicago Cubs player who left a game after being slapped in the head in a celebratory manner by a fellow teammate?
• Yay, MMS for the land of iPhone users is live!
• Gruber’s certainly got this right re: the Gmail user who a judge ORDERED TO HAVE HIS/HER GMAIL ACCOUNT DISABLED after a bank mailed information to the wrong email address. Sorry, no. That’s bogus.
• I guess we should look at these stats that Chris Thilk points to from eMarketer about social media measurement as a good place to start, right?
• Wil Wheaton points to an exceptional spoof ad starring none other than Cthulhu. That’s awesome.
• You know that time that you flew halfway across the country to make it to the U2 concert and just made it? Ben Wagner does.
• I think it’s funny that the first thing I noticed when downloading the Flickr app for my iPhone was the “from Yahoo!” page-turn at the bottom of the screen, and was just like “oh yeah, forgot about that.” Seems like some Flickr fans aren’t so amused with the “from Yahoo!” branding on Flickr’s site, either. I say go back to gamma. Also, Dave Coustan.
• Gothamist has a good interview with Brian Lehrer of WNYC, whom you media heads will probably be familiar with for one reason or another.
• Great move by the Nintendo folks for adding a second MotionPlus to the Wii Sports Resort package. As someone who didn’t buy the game the first time because of this, this might make me pick it up one of these days.
• Joy wished us all a Happy Thursday this week with a funny.
• I love Dopplr. Not sure I really care one way or another about Nokia purchasing it though. Just don’t screw it up. [via Kottke]

Maybe it’s boring to some of you, but I know that’s given people’s attention spans these days, sharing tips and links that people might dig on seems to work a lot better than longer form stuff, so I’m going to keep doing it. Alright, maybe not, but it’s here for the time being. Check out what I think you might be interested in today!

• My pal Jerry Milani has a cool article at Baseball Digest about a famous Ron Swoboda catch that some of you might be familiar with.
• This has been sitting in my flagged items for quite some time, but it’s worth checking out. See what happened when a Twitter-originating comment at a tradeshow got a negative response. It’s not just movie studios being discussed on the instantaneous reactions Twitter has had on PR and marketers, you know…
• It’s been like two months since this went down, but I’d just like to say publicly that I’m so DAMN livid that CLEAR shut down it’s not even funny. Now I just have to deal with going through those “expert flyer” lanes at the airport, full of people who still have laptops in their bags. Worst “Oh, sorry” people of all time.
• I’m really enjoying Snooth and wish I used it more. Anyone else digging on it for wine stuff?
• I have a longer post about this particular topic (in my head, naturally), but is anyone else finding the amount of reply spam they’re getting on Twitter after writing something using an active topic (with or without hashtags) becoming a little silly? I’m calling them “speets.”

Last Thursday, August 13, I caught this article where New York Times writer David Waldstein offered some insight into the debut of Rawlings’ new S100 batting helmet, built to withstand a 100 MPH fastball to the head. That article concluded with a couple of quotes from New York Mets third baseman David Wright, who said “If it provides more protection, then I’m all for it.”

Here’s where the crazy rolls in. Now almost every day in Major League Baseball there is probably a pitch that makes its way towards a batter’s head, but what are the odds that just two days after that article hit, Wright would find himself in the hospital with a concussion after being hit in the head with a 94 MPH fastball? You can see the clip here, if you haven’t already. (It wasn’t embeddable)

Just sayin’ – crazy stuff. Here’s hoping that Wright makes a full recovery, though it looks like he’s the final nail in the coffin for the Mets’ terrible season of injuries and bad play.

The title of this post shouldn’t be anything surprising to any of you, but I thought it was the most appropriate way to sum it all up. This past week, word came out that the New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez had come up positive for an “on the down low” steroids test that baseball ran back in 2003, when he was with the Texas Rangers. Upon hearing the news, I was actually a lot less surprised than I’m happy with – and I am guessing I’m not the only one, based on what talk radio has sounded like overnight.

This morning, I was listening to Richard Neer on WFAN, and he downplayed some of the “negative” news that had been buzzing around town with the release of former Yankee manager Joe Torre’s book, but said that wasn’t such great news. In fact, “devastating” was the word he used, I believe. I’ve gotta agree, unfortunately.

Unless some report comes forward saying that Rodriguez officially didn’t do steroids at any point, this interview with Katie Couric in 2007 is pretty damn harsh for public perception. Here’s the money lines that WFAN and others have been running all weekend:

“You never felt like, ‘This guy’s doing it, maybe I should look into this, too? He’s getting better numbers, playing better ball,’” Couric asked.

“I’ve never felt overmatched on the baseball field. I’ve always been a very strong, dominant position. And I felt that if I did my work as I’ve done since I was, you know, a rookie back in Seattle, I didn’t have a problem competing at any level. So, no,” he replied.

Ugh.

I hate to get all “childhood” cheesy on you, but I’m going to. Recently, my mom had told my fiancee that she’d dug up this big box of baseball cards (the ones that’ve survived) and wanted to give them to me (read: get them out of her house), and the first thing that cropped into my head was all the Mark McGwires, Jose Cansecos, and so on that would be in there for me to pretty much do nothing with. For those of you who’ve collected baseball cards, you can probably relate to the sentiment I’d love to describe here. For the rest of you, it’s basically like a big mental groan. With McGwire probably not making it into the Hall of Fame anytime soon, and he’s not alone. When I was a kid, or hell, seven or eight years ago, I never would have thought I’d see the day when Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and a host of others would be unwanted (though Olney’s use of “persona non grata” is, frankly, much more appropriate than “unwanted”) at MLB clubhouses or be almost laughed at when considered for baseball’s vaunted Hall of Fame.

But as ESPN’s Buster Olney says in the above-linked story, “this is a scarlet letter that really will never go away.” And it sucks. I hate to say it was a joke to think that the Yankees would have landed Alex Rodriguez and jam him into the left side of the infielder with future-HOFer Derek Jeter, whom I got to see in his rookie season in 1995 before he was “Derek Jeter” that we all know and (if you’re a Yankee fan, at least) love, but it was. I had gone to a game against Texas with a good friend, and we were joking about the craziness of free agency wins for the team, and how funny it would be if Rodriguez joined the team. I really never thought it would actually ever happen. And now, I can’t say it was the good moved that it’s felt like over the last few years, let alone to what it does for the waiting (because that’s what we’re going to do now) on the rest of the people on that list of 104 MLB players that tested positive for steroids during that fateful year of 2003.

SI’s John Heyman, who has been all over this, has more facts in a row than I think we’re all comfortable with knowing, has some great points about the list and how union COO Gene Orza is at the core of this situation:

All 104 players who tested positive were now at risk.

“He wouldn’t give up the BALCO names,” one baseball person said of Orza, “so instead, [the federal government] got every name.”

Richard Neer mentioned the fact that all of us were pretty confident that Alex Rodriguez – cleanly – would probably break some of the bigger records in baseball, including the home run crown that Barry Bonds holds right now, and I’ve gotta say that instead of us having something positive to look forward to in the next 5,10,15 years, we’ve got 5,10,15 years of new questions and frustrations to sit through. And that sucks.

When I was a kid, the one “organized” sport I really played a lot of was baseball. From Little League to “senior league” to the sandlot with friend who were happy to hop a fence, no matter how high, I most certainly was up for getting my baseball on. Through what, to me and a lot of my friends, was a “great” time for being a baseball fan – the 80’s – it was a blast. Between the stacks and stacks of baseball cards, the playing of “fantasy” baseball where four or five of us would manually, circa 1988-1991 or so, take the newspaper box scores and score our teams, and picking uniform numbers based on your favorite players, it was a good time. I even had a cool place to hang out through 7th-8th grade, and most of high school, in a baseball card store around the corner from my house, where a bunch of us from school would hang out and talk baseball and other sports stuff with the owner, Vinnie, who was a staunch Mets fan. A lot of us were Yankees fans, which always made for good rivalry fun, and it was interesting hearing about some fun baseball times in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s from an “adult” point of view.

One of my good friends at the time, Rob P., was one person whose teams I ended up on quite a bit, and we used to play game after game of catch in the yard. He was into the Minnesota Twins, and his dad was a Yankees fan, which was fun – considering the Yankees were pretty much sucking it up during the Don Mattingly years, and the Twins did fairly well for themselves in parts of the 80’s and 90’s. In any case, Rob’s dad had told us the story of Lyman Bostock, who had been absolutely stellar on the Minnesota Twins, and had moved on to the California Angels for the 1978 season after spurning offers from the Mets and Yankees. Rob was familiar with him having been a fan of the team, and it was probably one of the earliest “tragic” things I’d really heard about with regard to sports. While I’d been around for the deaths of a number of other players in the late 70’s, it wasn’t something I was “aware” of. Other than that, Len Bias’ tragic death was the other thing that struck a chord.

In any case, Lyman Bostock has always been a name that rings a bell whenever it comes up, and definitely starts a conversation when I’m around fellow baseball fans. So earlier today, when I caught this link on the front page of ESPN.com, I just had to click through and read it all. Jeff Pearlman most certainly fills in a lot of the blanks that I hadn’t really heard about before, and includes some comments and insights that made the story a little more “real” than what I’d heard before. I still find it pretty rare (thankfully we don’t have a ton of these happenings to look back on) to find something that captures experience the way that this story has – from fans of baseball at the time who remember where they were, or liked seeing the player play the game – and as we’re all hammered with story after story about this, that, and every other thing, it’s definitely rare that I have the time, or better yet, take the time, to read something all the way through, and then put together a post like this, to share with others.

In any case, enough of my rambles. Just thought it was a great piece that I’d share with fans of baseball, and so forth, and give Jeff Pearlman some kudos on striking a chord with the piece.

Okay, for those of you who don’t think people buy things from newsletters and other online locations, feast your eyes on this awesome hat – it’s the old school Oakland A’s logo on a silver and black, a la the Oakland Raiders, hat.

Found via this morning’s Thrillist SF – and there’s only 30, and I just bought 1, so you’ve got maybe 29 left to buy from…

Here’s an excerpt, where the names were changed to protect the innocent, of a conversation I’d had at dinner this week with a friend:

Me: So, what else is new?

She: Well, I have a new boyfriend for the last few months. He’s great!

Me: That’s awesome. What’s he do and where did you meet him?

She: Well, do you follow baseball? He’s [redacted], an outfielder for [redacted team].

Me: That’s pretty awesome. So how’d you guys meet?

Needless to say, you know when you have a conversation where something comes COMPLETELY out of left field? (sorry, no pun intended) Well, this was it.

MLB.com has an article on Monday about how all all Minor and Major League 1st & 3rd base coaches will wear helmets – ear flaps optional, it says – as of the 2008 season. This all went down in the wake of minor league coach Mike Coolbaugh, who was in the Colorado Rockies’ system in July when he was hit with a line drive and died from his injuries.

While it’s not fan-related, it’s the second major move by a sports league for safety of some sort, just years after the NHL added the netting above the glass in the offensive ends in the 2002 season. That time, it was after a 13-year old girl at a Columbus Blue Jackets game in March of 2002. In any case, it’s a smart move. While I was most certainly one who thought the netting was frustrating, I can also say that I’ve seen enough fans – especially those not necessarily paying attention – get whacked with pucks to see it being worthwhile. Coaches might not be happy with it for awhile – as the MLB.com article states – but I think they all get the point.